Non-Fiction Catalogue: May 2018

All the books in this catalogue are new books due for release in May 2018.

Because they are new books, we are at the whim of the publishers and, to some extent, the shipping companies – books can sometimes arrive later (or earlier) than, or occasionally be a different retail price, than originally quoted. Because space is a luxury, we bring in limited quantities of books. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Please reserve copies of anything you want, so you don’t miss out – ASAP! If a book has sold out by the time we receive your order, we will back-order and supply, when available. Pulp Fiction has access to thousands of books not shown in our monthly catalogues. We are only too happy to order anything, if we don’t have it on the shelves.

If you can’t make it into the shop, you can post, phone, or e-mail your order. We accept Mastercard, Visa, AMEX, cheques, and Australia Post Money Orders. Approximate current postage, within Australia, is:

1–2 paperbacks (up to 500g), $7.95

2–10 paperbacks or any trade paperbacks or hardcovers, within Brisbane, is $10.70

New Osprey military history titles

Hurricane–
This remarkable aircraft, designed and built to combat the emerging fighter strength of the Axis nations in the lead-up to World War II, made its name in the air battles over Britain and France in the first years of the war. Beloved by its pilots for its stable firing platform and reputation as a rugged survivor, the Hawker Hurricane quickly became the backbone of the RAF, scoring more kills than the more glamorous Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. This compact volume draws on a wealth of research, artwork and contemporary photographs, as well as images of surviving Hurricanes in flight today, to present a complete guide to this classic fighter aircraft.Aviation history | HC | $14.99

Short Stirling Units of World War 2 (Combat Aircraft 124)Falconer, Jonathan & Davey, Chris (illustrator)
Of the RAF’s trio of four-engined heavy bombers in World War 2, the mighty Short Stirling was the first to enter service in August 1940. From its first raid in February 1941, the Stirling was at the forefront of the British night bombing offensive against Germany before unacceptably high losses forced its relegation to second-line duties, later in the war. In its modified form – as the Mark IV – the Stirling fulfilled vital roles with the RAF as a paratroop transport and glider tug on D-Day, at Arnhem and on the Rhine crossing as well as flying countless Special Duties operations over Occupied Europe and Norway. Its last gasp was in 1948–49 when a handful of Mk Vs were acquired by the Royal Egyptian Air Force to bomb Israel in the First Arab-Israeli War. Containing numerous first-hand combat accounts from the crews that flew the bomber and detailed profile artwork, Short Stirling Units of World War 2 uncovers the history of one of the RAF’s greatest World War 2 bombers.Aviation history | PBK | $27.99

1918: Winning the War, Losing the WarStrohn, Matthias (editor)
In 2018, the world will be commemorating the centenary of the end of the First World War. In many ways, 1918 was the most dramatic year of the conflict. After the defeat of Russia in 1917, the Germans were able to concentrate their forces on the Western Front for the first time in the war, and the German offensives launched from March 1918 onward brought the Western Allies close to defeat. Having stopped the German offensives, the Entente started its counter-attacks on all fronts with the assistance of fresh US troops, driving the Germans back and, by November 1918, the Central Powers had been defeated. This new study is a multi-author work containing ten chapters by some of the best historians of the First World War from around the world writing today. It provides an overview and analysis of the different levels of war for each of the main armies involved within the changing context of the reality of warfare in 1918. It also looks in detail at the war at sea and in the air, and considers the aftermath and legacy of the First World War.Military (WWI) history | HC | $49.99

Brittany 1944: Hitler’s Final Defences in France (Campaign 320)Zaloga, Steven J & Tan, Darren (illustrator)
One of the prime objectives for the Allies following the D-Day landings was the capture of sufficient ports to supply their armies. The original Overlord plans assumed that ports along the Breton coast would be essential to expansion of the Normandy beach-head. This included the major ports at Brest and on Quiberon Bay. The newly arrived Third US Army (TUSA) under Lt Gen. George S Patton was delegated to take on the Brittany mission. In one of the most rapid mechanised advances of the war, TUSA had the ports of Avranches and Quiberon encircled by the second week of August 1944. But changing priorities meant that most of TUSA was redeployed, meaning only a single corps was left to take the Breton port cities. The fight would drag into 1945, long after German field armies had been driven from France. Using full colour maps and artwork as well as contemporary accounts and photographs, Brittany 1944 is the fascinating story of the siege of Germany’s last bastions on the French Atlantic coast.Military history | PBK | $29.99

General non-fiction

All That Remains: A Life in DeathBlack, Sue
Professor Dame Sue Black discusses the subject she grapples with every day – Death – bringing her unique perspective to the multitudinous circumstances in which life is lost. From the painful grieving process after losing a loved one, to violence, murder, criminal dismemberment, missing persons, war (such as Kosovo), natural disasters (such as a tsunami), unidentified bodies, historical remains – involving investigative agencies, lawyers, justice, criminal sentences, and always sadness and pain, she takes us on a scientific and reflective journey explaining the genetic DNA traits that develop before our birth, and those traits and features we gather in the twists and turns through life, all of which add up to an identity that reveals itself in death. Riveting as the best crime novel, and leavened with humour, this is an enriching and reassuring read and a parallel celebration of life.Forensic science/sociology | TP | $35.00

Beyond Infinity: An expedition to the outer limits of the mathematical universeCheng, Eugenia
Even small children know there are infinitely many whole numbers – start counting, and you’ll never reach the end. But there are also infinitely many decimal numbers between zero and one. Are these two types of infinity the same? Are they larger or smaller than each other? Can we even talk about ‘larger’ and ‘smaller’ when we talk about infinity? In Beyond Infinity, international maths sensation Eugenia Cheng reveals the inner workings of infinity. What happens when a new guest arrives at your infinite hotel – but you already have an infinite number of guests? How does infinity give Zeno’s tortoise the edge in a paradoxical foot-race with Achilles? And can we really make an infinite number of cookies from a finite amount of cookie dough? Wielding an armoury of inventive, intuitive metaphor, Cheng draws beginners and enthusiasts alike into the heart of this mysterious, powerful concept to reveal fundamental truths about mathematics, all the way from the infinitely large down to the infinitely small. Inside the weird and wonderful world of infinity, from endless hotels to bottomless cookie-jars – now in paperback.Mathematics | PBK | $22.99

The Big Bang (Ladybird Expert)Chown, Marcus
An accessible, authoritative, and entertaining introduction to the greatest discovery in the history of science – the birth of the universe. Written by award-winning broadcaster and cosmologist Marcus Chown, The Big Bang details how 13.82 billion years ago, all matter, energy, space – and even time – erupted into being in a titanic fireball. You’ll learn how scientists have approached the questions: What was the big bang? What drove the big bang? And what happened before the big bang? The evidence it turns out, is all around us…Science | HC | $19.99

Origin Story: A Big History of EverythingChristian, David
How did we get from the Big Bang to today’s staggering complexity, in which seven billion humans are connected into networks powerful enough to transform the planet? And why, in comparison, are our closest primate relatives reduced to near-extinction? Big History creator David Christian gives the answers in a mind-expanding cosmological detective story told on the grandest possible scale. He traces how, during eight key thresholds, the right conditions have allowed new forms of complexity to arise, from stars to galaxies, Earth to homo sapiens, agriculture to fossil fuels. This last mega-innovation gave us an energy bonanza that brought huge benefits to mankind, yet also threatens to shake apart everything we have created. This global origin story is one that we could only begin to tell recently, thanks to the underlying unity of modern knowledge. Panoramic in scope and thrillingly told, Origin Story reveals what we learn about human existence when we consider it from a universal scale.Science/history | TP | $35.00

1983: The World at the BrinkDowning, Taylor
A tense, thrilling account of how, in 1983, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly caused global Armageddon. 1983 was a supremely dangerous year – even more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the US, President Reagan massively increased defence spending, described the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire’ and announced his ‘Star Wars’ program, calling for a shield in space to defend the US from incoming missiles. Yuri Andropov, the paranoid Soviet leader, saw all this as signs of American aggression and convinced himself that the US really meant to attack the Soviet Union. He put the KGB on alert to look for signs of an imminent nuclear attack. When a Soviet fighter jet shot down Korean Air Lines flight KAL 007 after straying off course over a sensitive Soviet military area, President Reagan described it as a ‘terrorist act’ and ‘a crime against humanity’. The temperature was rising fast. Then at the height of the tension, NATO began a war game called Able Archer 83. In this exercise, NATO requested permission to use the codes to launch nuclear weapons. The nervous Soviets convinced themselves this was no exercise but the real thing. This is an extraordinary and largely unknown Cold War story of spies and double agents, of missiles being readied, of intelligence failures, misunderstandings and the panic of world leaders. With access to hundreds of extraordinary new documents just released in the US, Taylor Downing is able to tell for the first time the gripping but true story of how near the world came to the brink of nuclear war in 1983. 1983: The World at the Brink is a real-life thriller.History | TP | $32.99

Bullshit Jobs: A TheoryGraeber, David
Back in 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied that by the century’s end, technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks. But instead, something curious happened. Today, average working hours have not decreased, but increased. And now, across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services or admin, jobs that don’t seem to add anything to society: bullshit jobs. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber explores how this phenomenon – one more associated with the 20th-century Soviet Union, but which capitalism was supposed to eliminate – has happened. In doing so, he looks at how we value work, and how, rather than being productive, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.Labour economics/psychology | HC | $49.99

Seven Types of AtheismGray, John
‘When you explore older atheisms, you will find some of your firmest convictions – secular or religious – are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought.’ For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood ‘science’. John Gray’s stimulating and extremely enjoyable new book describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition, a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself, as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its ‘opposite’. A meditation on the importance of atheism in the modern world – and its inadequacies and contradictions – by one of Britain’s leading philosophers.Religion/Philosophy | HC | $45.00

Empire of the Clouds: The Golden Era of Britain’s AircraftHamilton-Paterson, James
In 1945, Britain was the world’s leading designer and builder of aircraft – a world-class achievement that was not mere rhetoric. And what aircraft they were. The sleek Comet, the first jet airliner. The awesome delta-winged Vulcan, an intercontinental bomber that could be thrown about the sky like a fighter. The Hawker Hunter, the most beautiful fighter-jet ever built and the Lightning, which could zoom ten miles above the clouds in a couple of minutes and whose pilots rated flying it as better than sex. How did Britain so lose the plot that today there is not a single aircraft manufacturer of any significance in the country? What became of the great industry of de Havilland or Handley Page? And what was it like to be alive in that marvellous post-war moment when innovative new British aircraft made their debut, and pilots were the rock stars of the age? Empire of the Clouds is a brilliant, nostalgic and provocative look at the golden age of British aircraft, from the post-war jet age to the recent sad decline. This is an updated edition to celebrate the centenary of the foundation of the Royal Air Force, in April 2018.Aviation history | PBK | $24.99

Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s FrankensteinHarkup, Kathryn
The year 1818 saw the publication of one of the most influential science-fiction stories of all time. Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on gothic horror and science fiction genres. The name Frankenstein has become part of our everyday language, often used in derogatory terms to describe scientists who have overstepped a perceived moral line. But how did a 19-year-old woman with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel, such as Frankenstein? The period 1790–1820 saw huge advances in our understanding of electricity and physiology. Sensational science demonstrations caught the imagination of the general public, and newspapers were full of lurid tales of murderers and resurrectionists. It is unlikely that Frankenstein would have been successful in his attempts to create life, back in 1818. However, advances in medical science mean we have overcome many of the stumbling blocks that would have thwarted his ambition. We can resuscitate people using defibrillators, we can save lives using blood transfusions, and we can prolong life through organ transplants – these procedures are nowadays considered almost routine. Many of these modern achievements are a direct result of 19th century scientists conducting their gruesome experiments on the dead. Making the Monster explores the science behind Shelley’s book. From tales of reanimated zombie kittens to electrical experiments on human cadavers, Kathryn Harkup examines the science and scientists that influenced Mary Shelley and inspired her most famous creation, Victor Frankenstein. While, thankfully, we are still far from being able to recreate Victor’s ‘creature’, scientists have tried to create the building blocks of life, and the dream of creating life-forms from scratch is now tantalisingly close.Science | PBK | $24.99

Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle AgesHartnell, Jack
Dripping with blood and gold, fetishised and tortured, gateway to earthly delights and point of contact with the divine, forcibly divided and powerful even beyond death, there was no territory more contested than the body in the medieval world. In Medieval Bodies, art historian Jack Hartnell uncovers the complex and fascinating ways in which the people of the Middle Ages thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves. In paintings and reliquaries that celebrated the – sometimes bizarre – martyrdoms of saints, the sacred dimension of the physical left its mark on their environment. In literature and politics, hearts and heads became powerful metaphors that shaped governance and society in ways that are still visible today. And doctors and natural philosophers were at the centre of a collision between centuries of sophisticated medical knowledge, and an ignorance of physiology as profound as its results were gruesome. Like a medieval pageant, this striking and unusual history brings together medicine, art, poetry, music, politics, cultural and social history and philosophy to reveal what life was really like for the men and women, who lived and died in the Middle Ages.Art history | HC | $49.99

Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War TwoHolland, James
It was to be the battle to end the air war, once and for all… During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first-ever round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. The aim was to smash the main factories and production centres of the Luftwaffe and at the same time draw the German fighter force up into the air and into battle. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this monumental air assault very quickly became known, simply, as Big Week. In the six months up to its launch, for the Allies, the bomber war was not turning out as planned. Raids by the US Eighth Air Force and the RAF deep into Germany were being decimated and falling far short of its purpose. With D-Day was drawing ever-closer, that was a massive problem. The Allies needed clear skies to invade. The clock was ticking inexorably. Yet, the Luftwaffe was also in crisis. Short of resources, of fuel, and on properly trained pilots, the strain on those still flying was immense, their losses severe. And despite the chaos of their leadership, they were achieving far more than should have been reasonably expected against the superior numbers of the Allied planes. Big Week is the knife-edged story of bomber against flak gun and fighter, but also, crucially, fighter against fighter, as the stakes rose higher and higher. Following the fortunes of pilots, aircrew and civilians from both sides, this is a blistering narrative of one of the most critical periods of the entire war, one that culminated in the largest air battle ever witnessed. It is also one that has been largely forgotten, but which has been brilliantly brought back to life by award-winning historian, James Holland.Aviation history | TP | $35.00

Superhuman: Life at the Extremes of Mental and Physical AbilityHooper, RowanSuperhuman is a fascinating, eye-opening and inspiring celebration of the best that the current human species has to offer. This is a book about what it feels like to be exceptional – and what it takes to get there. Why can some people achieve greatness when others can’t, no matter how hard they try? What are the secrets of long life and happiness? Just how much potential does our species have? In this inspirational book, New Scientist Managing Editor Rowan Hooper takes us on a tour of the peaks of human achievement. We sit down with some of the world’s finest minds, from a Nobel-prize winning scientist to a double Booker-prize winning author; we meet people whose power of focus has been the difference between a world record and death; we learn from international opera stars; we go back in time with memory champions, and we explore the transcendent experience of ultrarunners. We meet people who have rebounded from near-death, those who have demonstrated exceptional bravery, and those who have found happiness in the most unexpected ways. Drawing on interviews with a wide range of superhumans as well as those who study them, Hooper assesses the science of peak potential, reviewing the role of genetics alongside the famed 10,000 hours of practice. For anyone who ever felt that they might be able to do something extraordinary in life, for those who simply want to succeed, and for anyone interested in incredible human stories, Superhuman is a must-read.Science | TP | $29.99

No is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock PoliticsKlein, Naomi
Remember when it all seemed to be getting better? Before Trump happened? Naomi Klein, internationally acclaimed journalist, activist and bestselling author, shows us how we got to this surreal and dangerous place, how to stop it getting a lot worse, and how, if we keep our heads, we can make things better. No Is Not Enough reveals, among other things, how Trump’s election was not a peaceful transition, but a corporate takeover, one using deliberate shock tactics to generate wave after wave of crises and force through radical policies that will destroy people, the environment, the economy and national security. This book is the toolkit for shock resistance, showing all of us how we can break Trump’s spell and win the world we need. Don’t let them get away with it.Political controls and freedoms | PBK | $22.99

Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, From Pointless Bones to Broken GenesLents, Nathan
An illuminating, entertaining tour of the physical imperfections, from faulty knees to junk DNA, that make us human – and a unique approach to telling our evolutionary history. We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are evolution’s greatest creation, why are we so badly designed? We have retinas that face backward, the stump of a tail, and way too many bones in our wrists. We must find vitamins and nutrients in our diets that other animals simply make for themselves. Millions of us can’t reproduce successfully without help from modern science. We have nerves that take bizarre paths, muscles that attach to nothing, and lymph nodes that do more harm than good. And that’s just the beginning of the story. As biologist Nathan H Lents explains, our evolutionary history is a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. As we will discover, by exploring human shortcomings, we can peer into our past, because each of our flaws tells a story about our species’ evolutionary history. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of our four-billion-year-long evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections – for our mutations are, in their own way, a testament to our species’ greatness – and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.Biology/anatomy/evolution | TP | $29.99

Nothing But A Circus: Misadventures Among the PowerfulLevin, Daniel
In this eye-opening exploration of the human weakness for power, Daniel Levin takes us on a hilarious journey through the absurd world of our global elites, drawing unforgettable sketches of some of the puppets who stand guard; and the jugglers and conjurers employed within. Most spectacular of all, however, are the astonishing contortions performed by those closest to the top, to maintain the illusion of integrity, decency, and public service. Based on the author’s first-hand experiences of dealing with governments and political institutions around the world, Nothing But A Circus offers a rare glimpse of the conversations that happen behind closed doors, observing the appalling lengths that people go to in order to justify their unscrupulous choices, from Dubai to Luanda, Moscow to Beijing, and at the heart of the UN and the US government.Society and culture / Politics and law | PBK | $22.99

The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and EffectPearl, Judea & Mackenzie, Dana
‘Correlation does not imply causation.’ This mantra was invoked by scientists for decades in order to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smoking and cancer and carbon dioxide and global warming. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by world-renowned computer scientist Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed cause and effect on a firm scientific basis. Now, Pearl and science journalist Dana Mackenzie explain causal thinking to general readers for the first time, showing how it allows us to explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It is the essence of human and artificial intelligence. And just as Pearl’s discoveries have enabled machines to think better, The Book of Why explains how we can think better.Philosophy/Cognitive science | HC | $49.99

The Order of TimeRovelli, Carlo
Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, art and philosophy, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery, inviting us to imagine a world where time is in us and we are not in time.Science | HC | $29.99

Don’t Give Guns to Robots: Seven Deadly Disruptions and What They Mean for YouSavage, Adam & Curtis, Drew
We are now approaching a handful of new innovations whose adoption could truly alter society as we know it – innovations that are already looming, like driverless cars, consumer 3-D printing and robot-led warfare. These technologies are now coming faster and more furious than at any other point in recorded history. After nearly twenty years of studying cutting-edge technologies and teaching methods, renowned experimenter and internet phenomenon Drew Curtis and Adam Savage are ready to dive into their unparalleled network of experimenters and forward-thinkers to bring readers inside the minds and labs of the people who are creating the future. Using patterns from the past they answer the questions that are going to matter: which university degree will quadruple in value? What should you fear, what can you forget, and how can you take advantage of these transformations? And above all, what will these changes mean for you? Packed with tell-your-friends information and featuring the insights of the world’s greatest minds – known and unfamiliar – this is your indispensable guide to what is possible, what is probable, and what is guaranteed to happen when life-changing technologies get fully adopted.Business and finance/Science and medicine | HC | $45.00

Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep EstablishmentVaroufakis, Yanis
Varoufakis sparked one of the most spectacular and controversial battles in recent political history when, as finance minister of Greece, he attempted to re-negotiate his country’s relationship with the EU. Despite the mass support of the Greek people and the simple logic of his arguments, he succeeded only in provoking the fury of Europe’s political, financial and media elite. But the true story of what happened is almost entirely unknown – not least because so much of the EU’s real business takes place behind closed doors. In this fearless account, Varoufakis reveals all: an extraordinary tale of brinkmanship, hypocrisy, collusion and betrayal that will shake the deep establishment to its foundations. As is now clear, the same policies that required the tragic and brutal suppression of Greece’s democratic uprising have led directly to authoritarianism, populist revolt and instability throughout the Western world. Adults in the Room is an urgent wake-up call to renew European democracy, before it is too late.Economics/politics | PBK | $22.99

Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and CompaniesWest, Geoffrey
A startlingly original ‘theory of everything’ that invites us to rethink our understanding of the connections between human civilisation and the laws of nature. Geoffrey West’s research centres on a quest to find unifying principles and patterns connecting everything, from cells and ecosystems to cities, social networks and businesses. Why do organisms and ecosystems scale with size in a remarkably universal and systematic fashion? Is there a maximum size of cities? Of animals and plants? What about companies? Can scale show us how to create a more sustainable future? By applying the rigour of physics to questions of biology, visionary physicist Geoffrey West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. He then made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability to cities and to the business world. These investigations have led to powerful insights about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in profound ways, and how all complex systems are dancing to the same simple tune, however diverse and unrelated they may seem.Business and finance | PBK | $22.99

Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern WorldWinchester, Simon
Precision is the key to everything. It is an integral, unchallenged and essential component of our modern social, mercantile, scientific, mechanical and intellectual landscapes. The items we value in our daily lives – a camera, phone, computer, bicycle, car, a dishwasher, perhaps – all sport components that fit together with precision and operate with near perfection. We also assume that the more precise a device the better it is. And yet whilst we live lives peppered and larded with precision, we are not, when we come to think about it, entirely sure what precision is, or what it means. How and when did it begin to build the modern world? Simon Winchester seeks to answer these questions through stories of precision’s pioneers. Exactly takes us back to the origins of the Industrial Age, to Britain where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John ‘Iron-Mad’ Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. Thomas Jefferson exported their discoveries to the United States as manufacturing developed in the early twentieth century, with Britain’s Henry Royce developing the Rolls Royce and Henry Ford mass producing cars, Hattori’s Seiko and Leica lenses, to today’s cutting-edge developments from Europe, Asia and North America. As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?Science/engineering | TP | $32.99

The Courage of Hopelessness: Chronicles of a Year of Acting DangerouslyZizek, Slavoj
In these troubled times, even the most pessimistic diagnosis of our future ends with an uplifting hint that things might not be as bad as all that, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yet, argues Slavoj Zizek, it is only when we have admitted to ourselves that our situation is completely hopeless – that the light at the end of the tunnel is, in fact, the headlight of a train approaching us from the opposite direction – that fundamental change can be brought about. Surveying the various challenges in the world today, from mass migration and geopolitical tensions to terrorism, the explosion of rightist populism and the emergence of new radical politics – all of which, in their own way, express the impasses of global capitalism – Zizek explores whether there still remains the possibility for genuine change. Today, he proposes, the only true question is, or should be, this: do we endorse the predominant acceptance of capitalism as a fact of human nature, or does today’s capitalism contain strong enough antagonisms to prevent its infinite reproduction? Can we, he asks, move beyond the failure of socialism, and beyond the current wave of populist rage, and initiate radical change before the train hits?Philosophy – social and political | PBK | $19.99